Gaming devices such as slot machines and video poker machines provide fun and excitement for the player. Gaming, in general, provides an escape from the everyday rigors of life. Gaming devices and gaming establishments use bright lights and exciting sounds to set the gaming world apart from the rest of the world. Gaming devices, in particular, use one or more displays that enable the player to see and play the game. The displays typically portray the action of the game and ultimately indicate whether or not the player wins and often how much the player wins.
Slot machine and other gaming device displays have gone through a number of transitions since their inception. Originally, slot machines displayed purely mechanical reels. While these machines gained enormous popularity, the mechanical nature of the reels limited the number of paystops, which limited the number of different symbols and the number of different winning symbol combinations.
The advent of the computer and the video monitor expanded the possibilities for gaming devices. There are now video poker, video blackjack and other types of video gaming machines. Video displays have also been implemented in slot machines. The video slot machines use computers to randomly generate symbol combinations from an expanded number of different symbols. Video reel strips can include a virtually unlimited number of symbols, which enables a wide variety of different symbol combinations to be employed, including combinations that appear very infrequently and yield high payouts.
With slot machines, the video monitors have also been used to provide bonus or secondary games. Bonus games in wagering gaming machines have become much more prevalent and elaborate in recent years. For example, players play the base game of slot until becoming eligible for a bonus game. The base game temporarily pauses, while the player plays the bonus game. When the player completes the bonus game, the gaming device returns the player to the base game.
It should therefore be appreciated that a single video monitor is often sufficient to provide both the base game of slot and one or more bonus games that become triggered by the slot game. As illustrated in FIG. 1, there is room on the cabinet of gaming device 10 for an upper display area. That area, however, is often not utilized for gaming purposes and may simply provide a paytable, graphics and/or lettering that pertains to a theme of the gaming device.
Video monitors and in particular video-based slot machines are likely going to continue growing in popularity. As the video monitor has been used more and more, however, there has been a growing sentiment that some of the mystique of the old time mechanical gaming devices is lost when mechanical reels and mechanical displays are replaced by a video monitor.
Accordingly, a need exists to provide a wagering gaming device that may use a video monitor, which provides increased flexibility to the gaming device to add more symbols and more elaborate bonus games, while providing some aspect of the gaming device that is mechanical and provides a fun and exciting mechanical display.